I'd be interested to hear hypotheses for why this program did not reach its intended effect. I'm also curious what the effect would be if teenage boys were included. It seems like a major missing element.
Making them take care of a fake baby likely stimulates the exact same part of their brain that makes them want to have a baby. Sort of like how my wife (or myself, if I'm being honest) will see a cute baby and, despite having already had the experience of having children and knowing full well how difficult they can be, will ecstatically exclaim 'Wouldn't it be great to have another baby?'
Except, as adults, we can make a decision to have or not have a child with some perspective and some modicum of self control. Whereas if you induce the same feeling in a teenage girl, she might just go ahead and do it without thinking, as teenagers are apt to do.
[citation fucking needed]. I'd be highly surprised if that was indeed the case.
I went to school somewhat near my mom's station and I knew several girls in classmate's families who also wanted to be mothers. This is heavily cultural, and some cultures strongly emphasize family life (especially mothers), and these often are the ones in which you'll find a lot of teenage mothers.
In my mom's case, her school was heavily hispanic. Hispanic culture deifies mothers and many teenage / pre-teen girls saw becoming a mother as a way to escape the drudgeries of life and be turned into 'mother'. Of course, they didn't always think about the other sides of it.
Now, I realize this study is in Australia, but Hispanic culture is hardly unique in this area. Many cultures greatly celebrate mothers and motherhood and don't have the same cultural prohibition on teenage parenthood / emphasis on post-high-school education.
And before everyone gets all mad and cries racist, we are also of Latin stock.
EDIT: You seem very surprised that any girl may want a baby as a teenager, but I assure you they exist. Unfortunately, I cannot find direct research on the topic. However, I did find this documentary tracing women who wanted to have babies as teenagers and were happy about it: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/10/were-gl... . Hopefully this at least proves that such people exist.
More sources:
https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/planned-teenage-pregnancy-view...
^ This one in particular substantiates my hypothesis as "Many mothers spoke of their love of babies, often heightened by experience caring for other children."
I think there is a big difference between being surprised, and doubtful, that many/most teenage mothers want to be mothers—a position I and andrepd hold—and being surprised or doubtful that any teenage mother wants to be one—a position neither I, nor, I suspect, andrepd holds.
Why the disconnect?
> Recent data confirm that a wide variation in planning status exists across developing countries. Results from 37 recent DHS surveys show a median of about 75% of pregnancies to adolescents are planned (the data are not disaggregated by marital status). However, the percentage of pregnancies to adolescents that are planned varies widely, from a low of 42% in Colombia to a high of 93% in Egypt (Figure 23). Important regional variation also occurs (Figure 24), with a median of only about half of pregnancies planned in Latin America and the Caribbean versus 69% in sub-Saharan Africa, and between 80% and 90% in North Africa/West Asia/Europe and South and Southeast Asia.
> No clear pattern emerges when comparing planning status of pregnancy in adolescents versus older women. In about half of countries of 37 countries with a recent DHS, adolescents under 20 have higher rates of planned pregnancies compared with women 20-24 years old (Figure 25).
> Data from recent studies bolster findings from previous reviews that adolescents in developed countries have relatively high rates of unplanned pregnancies compared to their counterparts in developing countries. In the U.S. a 2002 national survey found that only 21.6% of births to women under 20 years older were planned, compared to 55.8% of births to women ages 20-24 (Chandra et al. 2005).
This study show one of three themes being ignorance, including some mothers thinking that having a child will strengthen their relationship with the father. So there is a sizable portion that chose to have a child, enough so that they are one of the main 3 themes in the results.
I doubt that not wanting to be a mother automatically means that you have the knowledge, and/or a safe way, to prevent or terminate a pregnancy.
We think “wouldn’t it be great if a nearby relative/friend had a baby”.
There's no need to say the infant simulator *increases* desire for pregnancy. I think it's more likely it doesn't effect attitudes much at all, but standard health education actually suppresses teenage pregnancy. So, the study sees the apparent increase in pregnancy with the simulator program, when compared to the somewhat effective health education.
The biggest parts of having a baby, for the mom mostly:
1) physical changes and pains during pregnancy, including lack of sleep
2) physical changes and pains during childbirth, including episiotomy/C section, and dealing with that recovery process
3) while this is all going on, you have to teach this baby to breastfeed. Which then leads to engorgement and other pains for the mom, at least for a few weeks.
And all of this is happening while you are on very broken sleep schedules. And assuming you do not have to worry about income/rent/etc.
Hell, it's possible that teenagers naturally have a larger than reality aversion to having children, and these simulations break down the aversion, increasing pregnancies.
Sadly, the shock of being in such a weird situation would likely calm the toddlers down.
Or maybe the simulations are easier than raising a baby and so they think "this is no big deal" and start acting irresponsibly.
Do we know why the programs are in these particular schools and not in the control group? It's possible that the schools were initially selected for the programs because they had a higher risk rate already, it's quite possible it is lower than it was before the programs which would mean that they are in fact effective. The methodology of this study isn't airtight.
It's important to note, the study considers abortions to be indicative of failure of the programs and counts abortions before the age of 20 as pregnancies, whereas they could (to put it lightly) be indicative of a desire not to have kids, demonstrating the efficacy of the programs. Not entirely accurate, because you'd expect the same in the schools without the programs, but I'd be interested in seeing the numbers without abortions included in them.